This week was a very fresh change of pace and environment for me at Focus HOPE. So I will just speak on my two highlighted moments! You can rest assured that I’ve also been doing all the work I have previously spoke as well.
On Tuesday I attended an event for Data Driven Detroit. It was a really good meeting as it presented just what Data Driven Detroit did and its many resources that it provided. They are also in the midst of a 3 year plan to roll out a very high level of content and making it interactive and accessible. It was good to see the connection between data resources and how it impacts community developement and such. As a case study, we studied the pipes systems in detroit. Obviously many things they said meant very little to me in terms o the technical terms, but it was still interesting to listen to the issue in general, and can understand the need for what they were proposing(blue and green pipelines etc). Towards the end when we had some free time to dialogue with people around us, I was able to talk about some of my projects at Focus: HOPE, which elicited good conversation on how communicating data to the community is important as well. Its one thing to have convincing data and as an org/government make a move, but another thing to have convincing data communicated to the community and have them involved in the planning process as well.
The second meeting i had was a community focus group, to talk to the community about the possible solutions. We also had a MDOT rep there as well. Things got very heated very quick, and it was clear that the MDOT worker had never taken an IGR course. hahah. But to make things brief, it was a very productive meeting with mutual respect on both sides and a lot of issues brought up. I recorded the audio and will be going over it this weekend to make more notes!
Thats about it for this week.
